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Sources of errors in the simulation of south Asian summer monsoon in the CMIP5 GCMs

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Abstract

Accurate simulation of the South Asian summer monsoon (SAM) is still an unresolved challenge. There has not been a benchmark effort to decipher the origin of undesired yet virtually invariable unsuccessfulness of general circulation models (GCMs) over this region. This study analyzes a large ensemble of CMIP5 GCMs to show that most of the simulation errors in the precipitation distribution and their driving mechanisms are systematic and of similar nature across the GCMs, with biases in meridional differential heating playing a critical role in determining the timing of monsoon onset over land, the magnitude of seasonal precipitation distribution and the trajectories of monsoon depressions. Errors in the pre-monsoon heat low over the lower latitudes and atmospheric latent heating over the slopes of Himalayas and Karakoram Range induce significant errors in the atmospheric circulations and meridional differential heating. Lack of timely precipitation further exacerbates such errors by limiting local moisture recycling and latent heating aloft from convection. Most of the summer monsoon errors and their sources are reproducible in the land–atmosphere configuration of a GCM when it is configured at horizontal grid spacing comparable to the CMIP5 GCMs. While an increase in resolution overcomes many modeling challenges, coarse resolution is not necessarily the primary driver in the exhibition of errors over South Asia. These results highlight the importance of previously less well known pre-monsoon mechanisms that critically influence the strength of SAM in the GCMs and highlight the importance of land–atmosphere interactions in the development and maintenance of SAM.

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Acknowledgments

We thank two anonymous reviewers for helpful and insightful comments. Support for model simulations, data storage and analysis is provided by the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725. We thank U.S. DOE’s Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison for providing coordinating support and leading development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals for CMIP. This work is supported by Regional and Global Climate Modeling program of DOE Office of Science and ORNL LDRD Project 32112413. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated for DOE by Battelle Memorial Institute under contract DE-AC05-76RL01830.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Climate Change Science Institute, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, PO Box 2008 MS6301, Oak Ridge, TN, 37831-6301, USA

    Moetasim Ashfaq, Deeksha Rastogi, Rui Mei & Danielle Touma

  2. Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Danielle Touma

  3. Atmospheric Sciences and Global Change Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA

    L. Ruby Leung

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  1. Moetasim Ashfaq
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Correspondence to Moetasim Ashfaq.

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Ashfaq, M., Rastogi, D., Mei, R. et al. Sources of errors in the simulation of south Asian summer monsoon in the CMIP5 GCMs. Clim Dyn 49, 193–223 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3337-7

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